Did you know that 13% of Americans are disabled? That’s over 42 million people. Without a doubt, there are disabled people within your organization and probably within your team. There are many effective ways we can ensure that we are creating an environment that supports disabled people to engage, interact and be productive and happy in the workplace.
Below are some examples of a few. Think about how you can implement inclusive practices in your team. Use this document to help you to start, share it with your team and add to it as you go.
1. Develop inclusive interviews.
Making some easy and cost-effective adaptions and accommodations to your interview style can enable a disabled person to demonstrate their ability to do the job. This means that you will be able to hire the best person for the role out of all the candidates because everybody has demonstrated their ability. Here are a few simple things that you can do to adapt your interviews.
- Send interview questions out in advance. This allows people to research and prepare for the interview and the questions they are going to be asked.
- Communicate the structure and process of the interview. Before you start the interview, run through what is going to happen and who is going to be in the interview. This will enable somebody to plan.
- Where possible, choose rooms with step-free access. This will mitigate any delays if somebody struggles to climb stairs.
- Allow 15 minutes extra time. For example, if you usually host 45-minute interviews, make these interviews 60 minutes. If somebody does not need the extra 15, you can both get your time back. However, it enables somebody to relax, knowing that they are not in a rush.
- Provide prompts. Not everybody will be great at articulating how they will do a job, but this does not mean that they won’t be good at it. Providing prompts can support somebody to tell you what you need to know.
- Allow people to show you. Some people may not be good at telling you how they will do something, but they would be good at showing you. Where possible, enable somebody to do this.
2. Provide reasonable accommodations.
Reasonable accommodations ensure a disabled person has an equitable opportunity to a non-disabled person. This is the case in the workplace and for disabled candidates. Here are a few things to consider when providing reasonable accommodations:
- Consider the accommodations you can provide without knowing somebody is disabled. This way, somebody does not need to tell you in order to get the support they need. Examples of this are step-free access into buildings and closed captions in meetings. Enabling a wheelchair user to enter unaided and a deaf person to engage from the outset.
The points in the list above are all examples of accommodations you can provide without prior knowledge of somebody’s support needs.
- Enquire about support needs as standard. This is for candidates applying for a role and employees in the workplace. This can also be done without prior knowledge of somebody’s disability. Asking, “Are there any access requirements you would like us to be aware of?” enables somebody to tell you what they need.
- Provide examples of accommodations that can be provided. This enables somebody to know that you are serious about supporting them and provides a good example of what is possible. AskJAN.org is a wonderful resource to understand examples of accommodations.
- Consider a process in your team for having conversations about reasonable accommodations. This process will support you as line managers when having individual conversations with disabled employees. In these conversations, you will be talking specifically about their support needs and how they can be supported to achieve in the workplace.
3. Develop inclusive meetings.
Developing a strategy or guidance for you and your team members that will enable inclusive meetings for disabled people will ensure that everybody can have the opportunity to participate and engage.
- Publish agendas in advance of meetings. This will enable people to think about what they will have to talk about and plan any support.
- Schedule regular breaks. Enabling anyone who has focusing difficulties to have a break in between.
- Assign somebody to keep a record of any actions and send it around to the rest of the group. This could be a different person in every meeting. This enables somebody to concentrate on what is being said rather than worry about remembering what they have to do next.
- Agree a camera policy for online meetings. Agree with the team whether the camera will be on or off during the meeting. For some people, having their cameras on can cause anxiety and for other people, not seeing people’s faces causes barriers (this can be the case for deaf people who rely on ASL or lipreading).
- Turn closed captions on as standard. Enabling people who rely on captions to engage and interact from the very beginning.
4. Business as usual strategies
The more you can integrate disability inclusion into your business-as-usual strategies, the more they will become natural, and the more colleagues and disabled employees will begin to understand that they can feel safe and welcome in the workplace.
- Have conversations about reasonable accommodations at regular intervals. And with your whole team, enabling anyone, disabled or non-disabled, to know that this support exists.
- Ask about support in one-to-ones/reviews. Providing a regular and consistent opportunity to talk about what is happening for an individual.
- Get used to asking about support needs. If you ask often enough, before you know it, you will be asking it without even thinking about it. It will also help people to understand that you are serious about creating an inclusive environment. And, it will demonstrate and role model the behaviors that you would like to see in the rest of your team.
